Islam(ophobia)

In the spring of 2018, a young Palestinian from Gaza was charged for terrorism and sentenced to life imprisonment by a jury at a local court in Krems, Austria. The sparse media reports indicate that the alleged terror attack, which did not actually happen, was intended to be carried out in occupied Jerusalem. The witnesses, juvenile Palestinians, were not actually present at the court in Austria, but gave their statements via Skype from an Israeli gaol.

Glenn Greenwald became famous for publishing the case of Edward Snowden in The Guardian. We re-produce his recent article on the western instrumental misuse of free speech as it is courageously putting the finder in the wound. The text appeared in The Intercept, a media project co-founded by Greenwald.

The imperialist euphoria that had afflicted the world is dead. The wounded beast is crying. The Emperor has declared war as if he were on a science fiction film set. It is not known to whom, it is not known when, but he will send his mercenaries somewhere to revenge the suffered humiliation. The supposedly biggest military power ever has been hit in its most sensitive point: its alleged invulnerability. After the first moments of panic and disorientation, so-called “national pride” is resurging in the USA thus spreading the most terrible imperialist and revanchist sentiments.

The ban on the wearing in public of the veil by Muslim women in France, which has just come into effect, brings shame to the French people and marks the latest stage in the process whereby Enlightenment values are being used to provide philosophical and political cover for the continuing isolation and stigmatisation of Muslims at home whilst bombing them overseas. It is a policy being carried out in the name of progress but which in truth is the cultural front in the ongoing war being waged by the West to assert and maintain its global hegemony.